Power got cheaper for 30 years. Not anymore.
We mapped the reversal by state. Find yours. Then something changed. We mapped where. Two maps show exactly where it flipped.
Eric Pachman
Published
July 14th 2026
Cheaper for a Generation - Then the Surge.
Temps where I live (Dayton, OH) are once again forecast to rise into the mid-90s this week. Combine that with my focus on LNG exports yesterday, and my mind can't stop thinking about utility prices.
Rather than fighting my mind, I just let it run wild this morning.
I was curious to see the long-term trend in real (inflation-adjusted) utility prices by state, as far back as I could get the data. What I found at first was shocking. In most states, they have declined. Meaningfully. Below is an interactive map showing the change in real utility prices between 1990 and 2024. It is largely green, and very green at that, especially through the center of the country (little consolation to Hawaii, which saw a 74% real increase). Hover over any state to see its change over this 34-year period.
It's always dangerous to Monday-morning-quarterback a chart, but I'll do it anyway. After I sat with this, I remembered what I wrote yesterday. About halfway through this 34-year period, U.S. companies unleashed technology (fracking, horizontal drilling, synthetic proppant) that unlocked natural gas once thought untouchable. It makes sense that U.S. consumers would benefit from that. The full story is surely more complicated. But generally speaking, this is good news.
But 2024 is the distant past in the Artificialocene (yes, I'm calling it: a new epoch, courtesy of AI). So we can't stop the analysis there. We had to push past the easy-to-pull annual files. And so we did. We used the monthly files to compare January through April of 2026 against the same months in 2024. We picked that window for two reasons: April 2026 is the freshest data we have, and matching the same months on both ends kills off seasonality, which is a big deal with utility prices.
Take a moment with this next map. It tells a completely different story.
So what changed since 2024? Two things, both big. By our math, U.S. data center capacity grew by roughly 40%. And by our count from yesterday, LNG exports grew by about 35%. Our two new giga-customers of energy kicked into high gear at the same time, and prices are now solidly up across most of the country.
Do not read that as cause and effect. We can't prove it here, and we're not trying to. We're saying two enormous new sources of demand switched on, and the decades-long trend broke at the same moment.
You can dig into individual states and get more clarity. Each has its own story.
- Washington, DC (up 33%) saw the sharpest jump on the map (it's the small square wedged between Maryland and Virginia, so look closely, we added a label to help you find it). Here's the twist: DC barely has any data centers. But it shares a regional power grid with Northern Virginia, the densest data center hub on Earth, and when that demand drives up the price of guaranteeing power for the whole region, DC pays it too. The wholesale price of that reserve power is now more than 1,000% higher than it was two years ago, and it flows straight onto Pepco bills. What makes it stranger still: DC was already one of the few places in this region drifting upward over the long haul, then in the last two years it rocketed to the very top. It is paying for a data center boom happening across the river.
- New Jersey (up 23%) is the same regional story, but it was met with meaningful political backlash. Same grid, same auction shock, one that sent wholesale prices up more than 800% in a single year and hit bills in June 2025. The state joined a multi-state lawsuit that forced a cap on the next auction, and its newly elected governor made freezing utility rates one of her first official acts.
- Nevada is the mirror image. For most of the past 34 years it was one of the few states where real prices rose. Then, in the last two years, it did the opposite of nearly everyone else and posted the largest real decline on the map. The timing offers a clue: right as this window opens, in early 2024, Nevada switched on Gemini, one of the largest solar-and-battery projects in the country, big enough to cover about a tenth of the state's peak demand by itself. More solar and storage followed through 2025. We can't prove that's the whole reason, but the pattern is hard to ignore. While the eastern states ran short and paid record prices, Nevada kept plugging in cheap power as fast as it could build it.
- And Maryland? You may be wondering why we saved the largest jump on the map for last. Because it was the largest on paper, but we don't trust it quite yet. Maryland's number is being driven by a single month of unusually high data. We can't yet tell whether that's real or an artifact that will get revised, so for now, we're just going to sit with the uncertainty around Maryland.
The point is this: you now have the data to measure the change. You can decide whether you like it. You can dig into what's driving it in your state. But ultimately, it's on our elected leaders to steer this, and right now it's not clear anyone is watching the whole board on your behalf. If you don't like what's happening where you live, tell them. That's the recourse we have. Otherwise, the path of least resistance is wherever the market, and by that I mean the for-profit companies building AI and exporting LNG, wants to take us.
One thing we can commit to: we will keep this updated as new monthly data is released. Somebody needs to put a scoreboard in front of the public so people can see what's actually happening in their state. We'll raise our hand to fill that gap. So bookmark this page, check it monthly, and hold your leaders accountable for keeping a lid on your state's energy prices.
How we did this
The data. Electricity prices come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). For the long view (1990 to 2024), we used EIA's Form 861 state residential prices, in cents per kilowatt-hour: the 1990 to 2020 figures from EIA's historical state series, and 2024 aggregated to a revenue-weighted state figure from EIA's 2024 release. For the recent view, we pulled monthly state residential prices from EIA's Open Data API and compared January through April of 2026 against the same four months of 2024.
Inflation adjustment. Every figure is real, meaning adjusted for inflation, so a dollar in 1990 or 2024 is comparable to a dollar today. We used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted). The long-view map is expressed in 2024 dollars; the recent-view map is expressed in April 2026 dollars, deflating each month individually before comparing.
A few honest caveats. These prices are an average-revenue proxy (total revenue divided by total electricity sold), not a posted rate on any one bill. The long-view and recent-view maps come from slightly different EIA products, so the word "2024" means a full calendar year on the first map and the January-to-April window on the second; read the first as "through 2024" and the second as "since early 2024." The 2026 figures are provisional monthly data, and EIA's final annual numbers publish later, so some states may shift when they do. Finally, because the recent window is only four months long, a single unusual month can swing an individual state's result. Maryland is the clearest example: one elevated month (March 2026) in EIA's current data is lifting its figure well above where the surrounding months sit, which is exactly why we flagged it and set it aside rather than crowning it the leader. We will keep watching as more months arrive.
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